


press on me, we are restless things

by somethingdifferent



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, Animal Death, Canonical Character Death, Country & Western, F/M, In a later chapter, POV Alternating, Uneasy Allies, Western, Wild West, basically imagine tros but a western and (hopefully) not terrible, before u ask NO i will not be killing ben, curse u coen brothers, i know nothing about the wild west, i'm sure someone has already done this but i havent seen it so this is happening, if you have seen true grit u will know what scene i will be referencing, making me start ANOTHER wip, reluctant allies, rey palpatine is a thing but for an actual reason lol, this will be a short fic!! bc i could not get the idea out of my brain, title and chapter titles from only skin by joanna newsom as per my usual thing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:02:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22915192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingdifferent/pseuds/somethingdifferent
Summary: Kylo would not be as easily fooled as his grandfather. He would escort her to Palpatine, avenge Anakin Skywalker, and take the bastard girl’s inherited money hand over fist.Rey offers the bounty hunter Kylo Ren twenty-five dollars and a bloody vengeance to find her grandfather in Texas and bring him to justice.He accepts both.[rey/ben; a wild west true grit au that nobody asked for]
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 18
Kudos: 89
Collections: Reylo Hidden Gems





	press on me, we are restless things

  
i.  
_ groping blindly, hungry for anything _

  
He would have liked to say that he knew it straightaway, just from looking at her. In truth, his mind was otherwise occupied, what with trying to reconcile his cash on hand with the bills he owed to debtors (as in more than one) and to the saloon (where he had yet to finish paying off his tab) and to his landlady (an old broad, mean as a snake, with no husband, no children, and no scruples about how she meant to get what she was owed). Kylo was perseverating about all of this when she came to him about the job. As such, he did not know it straightaway.

Who, exactly, he was walking into a deal with, that is.

A fox in his chicken coop. A wolf in his sheep pen. Something hungry and mean and out for blood, feathers and fur between her teeth, coming to him on an empty stomach. Her jaw, itching to snap shut like a trap around the first living thing she saw fit to make a meal of.

And so on, and so forth.

In point of fact: the first thing he noticed about her was her voice. Lilting, accented. Melodic. She was waiting for him on the porch of his ramshackle house (if it could be called such a thing, being little more than a lean-to of rotting wood held loosely together by rusted nails). As he passed, she called to him in that lilting voice of hers, “Are you Kylo Ren?”

He did not even glance up to see her face as he strode past her, his line of sight fixed on his horse. “I am,” he said shortly.

She followed after him. Kylo was neither pleased nor displeased about this. It did not particularly matter to him one way or the other.

She said, as he untethered his horse, “I have a job for you.”

He did take some pause at this. He shifted his eyes to hers. Hazel, he thought. Soft freckles flitting across her cheeks like stars. A soft curve of her jaw, a soft curve of her elbow in her palm, a soft curl of her hand around her forearm. All of her soft. He had not been hired for work in some weeks, and certainly never by a creature so fine as her, as gentle and velvet smooth as a newborn foal. He could not see a scratch on her.

He flickered his eyes away again, furrowing his brow. His voice was gruff, as if to remind both her and himself of the kind of man he was, when he asked, “What’s the job?”

She answered as though play acting. “I need you to find a man for me.”

Kylo did not so much as glance in her direction. “Then I think, Miss, you might be better served with a matchmaker than a bounty hunter,” he said dryly.

The woman— for he could see that she was one, if only just, with her hair piled high off of her neck in a row of three tied rolls, the buttons of her dress done up all the way to the middle of her throat, ankles hidden beneath heavy skirts like a lady— straightened her back. After a moment of chilly silence, Kylo looked up to see her glaring at him, her expression holding within it all the fires of hell.

“I need you to help me bring a man to justice,” she said, her voice containing none of the delicacy he had come to expect from her— from a woman such as her. She added, hard and cold as stone, “Dead or alive. I have heard he hides himself away somewhere in Texas. It may take a few months to find him. Perhaps longer.”

He narrowed his eyes. “How old are you?” he asked finally. 

She raised her head in defiance. Though what she felt she had to be defiant of, he did not know. Perhaps of God. Perhaps of nature. Perhaps of him. “I will be twenty next May.”

A breath of cold laughter escaped his lips. “You are hardly nineteen—”

“I am old enough yet to be wedded and to bear children,” she said. “The fact of my age has nothing to do with my purpose here. I intend to hire you for a job, and that is all you should need to know.”

He did not smile, but his lips may have slanted upwards slightly. A spitfire if there ever was one. “What is the pay?”

For a woman talking a big game about _justice_ and _dead or alive_ and _a few months work_ , she showed her hand damn quick. She lowered those hazel eyes to the ground, her pale fingers tightening up into fists. She looked as if she would like to pitch those hands at the sharp line of his nose like a child tossing rocks in a still lake.

“I have twenty-five dollars for you now,” she said quietly, “but I may have as much as two hundred should you assist me in my endeavors. Perhaps more.”

“Twenty-five dollars?” He scoffed. “That is a pittance at best. It is certainly not enough for a few months work.”

He turned away from her, once again focused on his task of loosening the ties holding Grimtaash to his wooden post.

“I have heard you are in need, sir,” she said. “Dire need, in fact. Twenty-five dollars— and a promise for more, mind you— may go a long way toward ridding yourself of some of that debt you have accumulated in your efforts to keep up with those miscreants you call compatriots.”

She had moved around the horse as she spoke, planting herself firmly in front of Kylo, so that he was forced to see her face. Her eyes wide and determined, her jaw set. She was smaller than him in every aspect, the top of her head reaching just to his chin, the width of her torso slim and lithe. He could, he was sure, put both hands around the middle of her and see his fingers meet together in the middle. Standing a foot back from him, she was closer to him than any women had been in longer than he cared to remember. He did not care much for the proximity. It made the air around him feel a little more difficult to breathe, charged like the moment before a strike of lightning. It made him feel somehow loosened, like a tugged thread threatening to unravel everything it could reach.

He decided at once that he did not care much for her either.

“And from whom,” he said sharply, “have you heard this?”

She looked at him evenly, her tone brisk and plain. “From your uncle, Mr. Solo,” she said.

The moment the words passed her lips, Kylo finally turned away from her completely, wrestling the ties off Grimtaash and wrapping the horse’s reins around his palms. He cursed the time wasted conferring with her, and cursed the pleasant construction of her features for distracting him. “Any friend of my uncle’s is an enemy of mine,” he snarled, and smoothly, as he had done it a hundred times before, lifted his foot into the stirrup, vaulted himself onto the saddle, and rode away towards town without a glance behind.

She found him the next evening. Not that he made himself so difficult to locate— she likely had to do little more than ask a passerby where Kylo Ren might be seen on any given night, and that random passerby could have given her any number of places to search, the saloon being at the top of the list.

She found him there, sitting at the bar with a nearly empty glass, his companions scattered through the room like leaves blown by the wind. She took the stool next to his and ordered herself a whisky. Her hair was still set in those damnable three rolls, though now he could see a few strands escaping near her ears, the light brown hair curled and waving along the sides of her cheeks.

Kylo did not rightly know what to make of this. _This_ being any of it.

At that moment, she was the only woman in the room who was not being paid for her time. She rested her elbow on the bar top, all business.

Kylo grimaced at her. “I see you have returned, though I have neither asked for nor desired it.”

“Mr. Solo,” she said quietly, as if afraid they might be overheard, “you left before I had a chance to plead my case. I entreat you to listen to me now, with a mind that is open to reason.”

“I believe you have found yourself in the wrong place, ma'am,” he told her. His voice was slightly slurred with drink, but still crisp, still neat, that old bought and paid for education coming through crystal clear. “There are many establishments here in town that might be appropriate for a lady; this is not one of them.”

“I am not a lady,” the woman said. He could see, in that moment, that it was no falsehood. Not with the way she swallowed down the bitter mouthful of alcohol, nor the way she slammed her hand on the table for another glassful. “There is no need for such a formality.”

”You are,” he countered stubbornly, “with a voice like yours. Lady is the only word for you. A beautiful, delicate little lady, who knows nothing of what she asks— nay, _demands_ — of me. If you have heard so much of me from my uncle, then I find myself very concerned about your continued survival on this earth, as any rational creature that valued their life would have thought twice before interrupting my drink in a room such as this, using a name that I have killed more important men than you for uttering.”

She bristled. “I would wager I have seen more pain,” she hissed, “and torment, and suffering in my lifetime than you have in yours. I am not afraid of your empty threats— as that, sir, is all they are— and I am not afraid of you. I know there are worse men than Kylo Ren, more sadistic and more cruel and more evil. I have met several myself. Your uncle has mentioned you but rarely, and although he remains in doubt of the existence of your conscience, he did impress upon me two things: you are a keenly skilled tracker, and you are heartless. I need both if I am to accomplish what I aim to, and believe me, I aim to.”

Kylo ran his eyes along her body, considering her. The young woman did not flush from the attention; she merely held her neck upright and allowed him to take in his fill. And, oh, did he take in his fill. He would gorge himself on her, if she would let him. “A pretty enough speech, I grant you," he acknowledged eventually, inclining his head in mocking deference. "It does, however, beg the question of why a competent young woman such as you is so desirous of my assistance.”

“Because though I have the motive to pursue this man, I lack the means and skills that would allow me to catch him. I have a horse, but no gun, and I am not quite so skilled a tracker as you. I need you to find whatever hole in the ground he has hidden himself, and I will see him killed at my hand or hanged by the state.”

“All of this,” he said derisively, “and you cannot scrounge up a better offer than twenty-five dollars to peak my interest.”

“Twenty-five dollars,” she said, “and more upon the end of our time together.”

“I am not so foolish to believe the hollow promises of a stranger.”

“Sir, you have not even heard the best part. I offer you twenty-five dollars now, and more upon delivery, but this is nothing compared to this that I will give to you: the opportunity for bloody satisfaction. Mr. Solo, I offer you _revenge_.”

She did catch his attention at that. This, he would realize later, was the moment he was damned beyond any saving. This, or the moment he first laid his eyes upon her. Later, he would hardly be able to tell.

Kylo sat up fully, glowering down at the woman. She met his eyes without fear and without pretense. He saw her in that moment: the feathers in her teeth. A wolf in the clothes of a beautiful woman. “ _Revenge_ ,” he said, and the word was scarcely a whisper. “For what? And upon who?”

She shifted on her stool to inch closer to him, and he caught in that instant the way her eyes flickered, darkness swallowing her whole. “I am disappointed, Mr. Solo,” she said, almost sweetly. “All this time we have been speaking, and you have not once had the manners to ask who I am, and who I seek, and why. Your mother would be ashamed.”

At the mention of his mother, there was something inside him that snapped in equal halves. He brought his face to hers, no longer caring that she was a member of the fairer sex. She did not seem very fair to him. When he leaned in closer, his nose inches away from hers, she did not even flinch. “Who are you?” he hissed. “Why have you come to me?”

For a long while, she did not say anything. She drank the rest of her whisky and delicately wiped a drop of the alcohol from her full lower lip. Kylo watched the action with tensed muscles, feeling a little like a snake, coiled. When she spoke, it was almost serene. Practiced. As though she had waited for this moment for longer than either of them could truly imagine. “I seek justice for my parents,” she said at last. “They were murdered by my grandfather, my father's father, many years ago. To save my life, my mother, God rest her soul, smuggled me from our home with a faithful servant. But, as fate would have it, he, too, was a cruel man who kept me under his thumb through starvation, intimidation, and beatings. He told me my parents had sold me to him, and, sadly, I spent much of my life believing his lies. When I was only seventeen, your uncle found me. He saw the depths of my despair; not only that, but my potential to learn his trade as a trapper. He took me in as his ward. It was then that I learned the truth about how my mother and father died— that they were the collateral damage of an evil man who sought to steal my father's land, and his oil fields, by any means possible.”

Kylo was quiet for a moment. He polished off his drink and stood to leave. The woman got to her feet as well, blocking his exit. Though he towered over her, she did not bend away from him in fright. “An unfortunate story, truly,” he said through his teeth. “But, you have yet to tell me of my bloody satisfaction.”

“And you have yet to ask who I am,” she threw back, hitting her target as surely as a sharpshooter. “My _name_ , Mr. Solo, is Rey Palpatine. I am the sole heir of the man who killed Anakin Skywalker, and I entreat you to help me claim my rightful fortune.”

Kylo stared at her, his mouth open, dumbstruck and slack-jawed.

The woman— Rey, Rey, _Rey Palpatine_ — gazed back. She did not smile, not quite. There was a flash of something that turned her lips up just barely, an expression of triumph. Victory.

She asked, already knowing the answer, “Now are you interested?”

It was decided, by her more so than him, that they would set off at dawn the next morning. Kylo went to bed that night feeling on edge— a nervous sort of excitement, a quickening in his blood, a pulsing through his veins. It was the kind of feeling he had before he pulled the trigger of his gun, each and every time he pulled the trigger. It was the thing he felt before he killed Han Solo.

It was not the thing he felt after he killed him, however.

Kylo did not fall asleep for hours. He tossed and turned in bed, picturing it. Picturing avenging his grandfather’s death. Anakin Skywalker had been killed in a fire on one of Palpatine’s oil rigs. Burned alive. It was said his body melted and contorted beyond recognition. It was also said that his young wife died of grief when she heard of her husband’s death, leaving her two infant children as orphans. An accident, the papers wrote, but everyone knew the truth. They knew it was cold-blooded murder. They all knew, Kylo thought with a cold fury, and they did nothing, and still Palpatine lived, his progeny flourishing. His progeny, who had taken Kylo’s place as his uncle’s protege. His progeny, who would soon become the heiress of a large fortune and the mistress of a great deal of oil-rich land. His progeny, who was a beautiful young woman with a slender waist and eyes like hellfire.

Rey, he thought. Rey.

Kylo would not be as easily fooled as his grandfather. He would escort her to Palpatine, avenge Anakin Skywalker, and take the bastard girl’s inherited money hand over fist.

He finally drifted off into a restless sleep in the early hours before dawn, his stomach twisting into knots.

He woke to water splashing onto his face.

Kylo sputtered, jerking out of the bed with the overwhelming intention to shoot whoever tore him from dreamless sleep. He reached blindly for his gun, his fingers curled halfway around the handle before he recognized, belatedly, the woman standing at the side of his bed, her arms clutching a wooden pail.

Kylo dragged a hand down his face, wiping the frigid water from his brow. “What the _hell_?” 

“Get up,” she spat, throwing the bucket on the floor. It went down hard, splintering the wood, belying a wiry strength in her that Kylo had not seen before. “You agreed to meet me at dawn at the inn. Dawn came and went, and still, I waited. For hours. _Get up_.”

He stared at her, wild-eyed and bewildered. “You are a _madwoman_.”

“And you promised you would help me,” she said, her voice almost a shriek. “You said our journey would begin today. Have you even packed?”

“I have,” he lied.

“Then rise, sir, and we may yet make it out in good time.”

“I _will_.”

Kylo looked meaningfully at the door. Still, she did not budge. “I may need a moment of privacy,” he gritted out after a moment.

She merely folded her arms across her chest, cocking her hip.

He rolled his eyes, sitting upright further, so that the thin sheet covering him slipped down his bare chest. The woman’s eyes widened at the sight, then closed altogether when the blanket slipped down further. Kylo smirked, despite himself. So she was not so hardened as she imagined herself to be.

She turned away from him as he stood, tugging his trousers on. “You will not, I trust, sleep in such a manner on our journey,” she said, the slightest shake trembling through the words. “There being a lady present.”

“I believe it was you, Miss Palpatine, who disdained such a title.” He cleared his throat once he was properly dressed, and she glanced back at him as if assuring herself of his decency. There was a flush staining high on her cheeks, the color of roses in full bloom. The color, he thought, of the ruby ring he still carried with him, just as foolish as ever. Once she determined that he was properly clothed, she faced him again, her hands fidgeting with the stiff fabric of her shirtsleeves. She wore pants; it startled Kylo in a way he could not quite articulate.

She looked at him head-on when she said, “Mr. Solo, I have one particular request from you. I ask that you do not call me by such a name again.”

He furrowed his brow, confused. “How am I to get your attention if I cannot call you Miss Pal—”

“You may call me Rey.” She tilted her chin up, unveiling the gentle line of her throat. Kylo blinked; what with her fastidiously buttoned dress, the thick, dark fabric concealing the shape of her, he had not previously noticed much about her appearance, save her pretty face. Now though, with the fit of her trousers nearer to her skin than the wide skirt she was wearing a day earlier, the slight part at the collar of her shirt opening to reveal the hollow of her throat, he could see more of her than before. Perhaps more than he wanted.

“I do not believe that would be considered proper,” he muttered.

“And what does propriety matter to a man like you?” she said in a voice of steel. “You may call me Rey, or you may call me nothing at all.”

He pursed his lips and nodded once. He decided, then, that he would call her nothing at all.

It took him the better part of an hour to gather his supplies. When he finally emerged from his house, to the sight of Rey sitting, fuming on the steps of his front porch, it was nearly ten o’clock.

“You are not doing much to prove that you are worth the twenty-five dollars I have already given you,” she snapped.

He ignored her irritation, looking out at the yard. “Where is your horse? You said you had one.”

She pointed, frowning. Kylo followed the line of her finger and snorted.

“That,” he said sternly, “barely qualifies as a pony.”

“BB is my horse,” Rey corrected, stubborn as the mule she rode in on. “She is fast, she is fierce, and she is a beauty.”

“She will not keep up with Grimtaash.”

Rey leveled him with a glare. Seeing her now, he found it hard to believe she had been raised in such poorly circumstances. She had all the bearings of a queen, holding her uncovered head up as if it were dripping with gold and shimmering jewels, holding her body as if her hunting clothes were truly satin and silk. Each word she spoke seemed a proclamation, that melodic voice of hers dripping into him, each syllable stinging like the prick of a pin.

“She will,” Rey said.

He set his mouth in a hard line. It was better, he determined, that the girl discover sooner rather than later that neither she nor her pony would be able to keep pace with him. He would rid himself of her company handily, and kill Palpatine himself without the nuisance of a woman at his side.

Kylo strode to his own horse, strapping down his pack and double checking the ties, while Rey set about doing the same.

He turned once he finished his task, his mouth opening to ask, reluctantly, if she needed any assistance, when he abruptly stopped.

Rey was lifting her knee, her boot fitting into the stirrup easily. She hauled herself over the side of the creature, parting her legs to sit astride it, and squeezed her thighs to encourage it to step forward. All as if she had done it a hundred times before.

Kylo almost stopped breathing.

“Well,” she said, looking down at him from the seat of her horse. “Are you joining me?”

After a dizzying moment, he climbed onto his own steed, trying to shake his sudden vertigo.

Rey pointed her horse west, and Kylo raised his voice, calling out, “We are bound for Little Rock.”

She whipped her head around quick enough he worried, momentarily, that she might snap that pretty little neck. “Little Rock?” she stammered. “But that is almost two days ride, and in the wrong direction.”

“You have given me a nigh impossible task,” Kylo said calmly. He jerked the reins and tightened his calves around Grimtaash’s middle, bringing the animal to a trot. Rey snapped her reins and caught up after a few seconds. Kylo was nearly impressed. “Sheev Palpatine is not an easy man to find unless he desires to be found,” he went on, directing the statement less at her and more at the space between them. “If he were, he would have been killed fifteen times over by now.”

“You have yet to explain our current course,” Rey said testily.

“There is a lawman I know in Little Rock,” Kylo said. “An old friend, Snoke. If anyone might be able to point us in the direction of your grandfather, it would be him. He has, in the past, been of considerable assistance to me.”

“But we will lose almost a week,” she protested.

“Would you prefer we wander aimlessly around Texas hoping we run into him?” Kylo shook his head. “We will start with finding a lead that can narrow our search. A week hardly matters when you have been waiting more than a decade.”

Rey said nothing to that; when Kylo chanced a look, he could see that she was quietly furious, her jaw set in displeasure. It was no matter. She would thank him once Snoke provided them with a solid lead, as Kylo had no doubt that he would. It would be a task easily finished, he was sure, and he would be able to part ways with the woman a few hundred dollars richer for the effort.

Then, he would return to his usual life, and his time with Rey would be nothing more than a strange, waking dream.

The thought pleased Kylo, and he spurred his horse on that much faster, thinking of the fortune that would soon fall like drops of rain into his lap.

A short distance away, Rey steered her horse as well as if she had been riding all her life. Kylo led her to Little Rock, to Snoke, as blissfully unaware as a man stumbling drunk into the spiked and gaping maw of a bear trap.


End file.
